In the middle of a lovers’ spat so heinously profane it would stop a longshoreman short, one of the verbal combatants in “The Mother------ With the Hat” pauses to offer a truce “before someone here says something that can’t be changed.”

You have to wonder what that “something” could possibly be, given the ear-searing nature of what’s already been uttered (including the wanton blaspheming of both nuns and kittens).

But “The Mother------ With the Hat” is not the kind of play that gives you time to stop and wonder. As staged to blistering and often outrageously funny effect at Cygnet Theatre, Steven Adly Guirgis’ tale of New Yorkers battling both addiction and each other careens from one gritty, soul-baring scene to another.

One thing to know about this show: The hyphens in the title don’t lie. This is not a play for the underaged or the overly sensitive (not to mention nuns or kittens), and even those who are game to go with it can be excused for feeling the language is over the top at times.

But “Hat,” a hit on Broadway in 2011 (with Chris Rock in the cast), gets at its characters’ struggles in a visceral and ultimately sympathetic way, and the excellent acting in director Rob Lutfy’s propulsive production furthers that feat in ways that go beyond words.

At the center of the saga is Jackie (Steven Lone), an alcoholic who has just been sprung from prison and onto parole.

Jackie seems to be taking a sincere shot at sobriety and responsibility; he has just landed a job and is bringing flowers (plus a lottery ticket) to his longtime girlfriend, Veronica (Sandra Ruiz), in their beat-up apartment.

But in the middle of his celebration, he spies an unfamiliar hat in the bedroom. Soon, Jackie and Veronica are in a screaming match over whether she’s had an illicit visitation.

Lone has had numerous standout performances in theaters around town, but this has to rank as one of his best; he nails Jackie’s blend of still-boyish exuberance and vulnerability, while also finding a good feel for Guirgis’ comic rhythms.

And he has an ideal counterpart in Laurence Brown as Ralph, Jackie’s smooth-talking, health-food-peddling Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor.

Brown is another San Diego actor of significant distinction, and he likewise turns in memorable work as this manipulative and yet hugely persuasive figure, who has a dancer’s moves and a motivational speaker’s silky spiels. (I believe he actually made me sober, and all I’d had were some Sweet Tarts.)

But Ralph doesn’t seem to be able to work the same magic at home; his cynical wife, Victoria (the sharp and intense Whitney Brianna Thomas), barely speaks to him.

Both Thomas and Ruiz do strong, committed work here; the latter handles some of the most excoriating speeches, and has one especially funny moment when she scolds her addict mom on the phone while pausing to snort lines of cocaine.

But “Hat” does feel a bit like a man’s play, and those characters (particularly Victoria) are not drawn as richly as they could be.